כמה ערך יש בדרך
kama erekh yesh baderkh
How much value there is in traveling along the road
We began our final session with the Hebrew phrase noted above. Meryll then provided the context, informing us that it is a bumper sticker that you frequently see in Israel where Israeli drivers are quite impatient. It serves as a reminder to appreciate the journey. With that introduction she asked us to reflect on what we felt we had learned along the road over this past year.
Some found it a time of looking inward. Our world shrank and we “grew where we were planted.” Our lives were stripped down to their essence as distractions were removed. We focused on unfinished work, on what was truly meaningful. At the same time, our personal vulnerability was highlighted. While for some an inward dive proved beneficial, we noted that private contemplative time was often a luxury while vulnerability dominated the lives of many. We also realized the sense of connectedness that we had with everyone else who shared this earth and the vulnerability that accompanied it. It was noted that periods of brokenness are not unique to our time while others reflected on the fluidity and motion that accompanies brokenness, it is a season that we flow through, finding our way as water flows through rocks. We put ourselves back together many times in the course of a lifetime and we need to value the seams. For me, it has been a reminder that this is a point in time on a larger journey and it is that very brokenness that often opens us up to new possibilities.
Meryll closed out our discussion with the prayer for healing as we ask for the healing of both body and soul.The balance of our session was devoted to sharing our work, always the highlight of the year. As it is impossible to devote the time and space to each work that it deserves, I have taken to jotting a word or phrase from each and forming them into a poem or perhaps a prayer as we appreciate the journey through brokenness for the openings it provides for each of us to grow.
On The Road
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| Photo by Ann Ginsburgh-Hofkin |
We try to find meaning,
Seeking sense in upheaval,
Parsing ideas and layers,
Stretching towards shared vision,
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| artwork by Gloria Cooper |
A meandering path of footsteps
Stitches us to memories,
We seek survival
As she sought survival,
hidden in plain sight
Later assembling the pieces of her life,
Stitching together a modicum of wholeness.
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| artwork-Rani Halpern and Maya |
Three generations of hands
touched these papers,
Created separately
But assembled together
In a rich joinery of gold
That celebrates the broken places.
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| Book Cover- Who Was My Daddy? for Bowie Light Bell |
But some brokenness is too hard to conceive
Until it confronts and tears at us with edges too sharp
To grasp with our bare hands.
We drive through life,
What happens when it becomes winter?
We plow through, we keep moving.
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| Artwork by Leah Golberstein |
We connect our hearts with band aids
And focus on gratitude.
We sew our past selves together,
It is the whole point.
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| Artwork by Paula Pergament |
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| Artwork by Susan Weinberg |
It is out of brokenness that we create new pathways.
Beneath the surface
The healing begins.
The pulsation of life finds its way.
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| Artwork by Ilene Mojsilov |
We have lived through a storm.
A wintery white field from which artifacts poke,
We excavate and dig
In a search for meaning,
Repurposing, reprocessing
Furrows in the soil and in the soul
As we find what constitutes a life.
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| From video by Meryll Page & partner |
Generations gather around a Shabbat table.
This is what wholeness looks like,
A mosaic of individuals forms a whole.
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| Photo by Sylvia Horwitz |
Abandoned farmhouses,
Bookmarks of time
Remind us of loss
But also of the love that formed it
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| Artwork-Alison Morse and Julianne |
It is a pathway
A game board on which we journey
Finding the path to who we are,
Sharing that path with others,
We may find a discovery that surprises us
On the road ahead.
